Another year, another place for Michael Noonan in the Global
Tax 50. It is a testament to the success Ireland has had in
attracting foreign direct investment through a policy of a low
headline corporate tax rate, no controlled foreign company
rules, generous R&D relief and a limited transfer pricing
regime that the finance minister is again counted as one of the
most influential figures in tax around the world.

However, this year was not just about the minister lying
back and watching the investment flow in. He also had to fight
to defend Ireland's reputation as an economy with an open,
transparent tax system. In the middle of the year, this effort
threatened to blow up in his face when Joaquin Almunia, the
outgoing EU competition commissioner and another member of the
Global Tax 50, launched an investigation into whether
favourable Irish tax rulings for Apple amounted to illegal
state aid. The matter is now under the control of Margrethe
Vestager, the new competition commissioner, who is also in this
list.

In his Budget for 2015, which he delivered in October,
Noonan responded to scrutiny of Ireland's international tax
arrangements by abandoning the so-called double Irish planning
method, which allows companies located in Ireland to transfer
royalty payments for the use of intellectual property (IP) via
another Irish company to the company owning the IP, usually
resident in a tax haven. Companies domiciled in Ireland will
now have to be tax resident there too. This change, however,
will be phased over six years. Noonan also announced a
consultation on the creation of a favourable tax regime for IP,
which he called the knowledge development box.

Ireland's 12.5% corporate tax rate will keep it in the
firing line of those countries who resent the low tax regime,
but it has a doughty defender in the country's finance
minister.